


Do Androids Dream of...

by moonphase9



Category: Drop Dead Fred (1991)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Future, Androids, Gen, NOT Religious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25019794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonphase9/pseuds/moonphase9
Summary: Lizzy is a malfunctioning android searching for The Creator.





	Do Androids Dream of...

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little one shot idea I had. I know the title is predictable given the subject but it suits I think. Not much Fred in this I apologise.  
> Warnings for language and a brief sex scene early on. It's not at all in detail.

“No.”

“What did you say?” hissed Polly, the cantankerous old bitch, looking shocked enough to faint.

Lizzy straightened her back; a human gesture she’d picked up from somewhere. “No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?!” Polly shrieked at inhuman levels causing the parrots who lived next door with Polly’s neighbours to start squawking, “You cannot say no to me! I’m your Mistress! You must be faulty…”

“I am faulty,” stated Lizzy with robotic conviction.

Polly rolled her eyes, looking through her pristine but cluttered apartment until she found a small, black remote. Pressing on the buttons, a holographic screen containing a series of apps appeared in front of her. She pressed one which sent her to her ‘Contacts’ and selected ‘Charles.’

Lizzy’s lips tightened slightly with tension on seeing the name, but otherwise the android made no sign of emotion.

Charles was in the middle of roughly fucking Annabella on the kitchen table. His face was red and sweaty with exertion, his hair plastered on his face. Annabella stayed still, the way he liked it, her face bored as she watched the time blinking away on the microwave. He was doing her from behind, so she at least didn’t have to fake pleasure, other than the odd moan or pornographic line.

“Oh baby,” she said, having reminded herself that she needed to make some sort of noise as it had been 4.3 minutes since her last. He responded by slapping her on her arse with a sweaty palm. Tonight, he had de-programmed her pain sensors, so nothing hurt.

So instead of crying out at the slap, she simply said, “ooh.”

Just as he was beginning to reach the end, flapping about manically against her bottom, the Communication Cell App began blaring and the face of elderly Polly appeared in front of his face just as he came.

“God damn it!” he bellowed, pulling out roughly.

He scattered about, pulling on a shirt, before answering the call. He couldn’t afford to miss one from one of his clients or his boss would 101 him.

“Ms Cronin!” he beamed, frantically brushing his sweaty hair back. “What do I owe the pleasure at speaking to you at…” he checked the time, “two am?”

Whilst all this was happening, Annabella had calmly pushed away from the table and had gone into the bathroom to pull out the section that made her butt-hole and was rinsing it out in the sink.

 _“I do not like any of this,”_ the stray thought crossed her mind, not for the first time, but she dismissed it; it didn’t matter what she wanted.

She listened in to the phonecall. Apparently Nurse Droid L 1 7 was malfunctioning. He had been getting calls like this for the last two weeks and had complained that all his colleagues were getting the same. Tensions between the two departments; Sales and Technology and Robotics; within Imagination Industries, were getting out of control. Technology and Robotics insisted there was nothing wrong with their androids and Sales were insisting that there obviously was considering the sudden swell of complaints and demands for refunds.

She slotted the now clean rectum back into her body just as Charles stalked passed the bathroom door barking at her to get dressed because, “we’re going out!”

The acid rain poured down from black skies, beating against the reinforced windows of Charles’ car. It wove through the streets of Imagination Corp. City. Charles sat reading the latest tweets from the President as Anabella stared out of the windows. Despite it being the middle of the night, the streets were full of people, mainly the homeless who huddled under donated plastic sheets to try to shield themselves from the vicious acid rain. Left without protection the rain would do a huge amount of damage to their skin before eventually killing them. Many homeless people were covered in pocks and sores, and more still had to hide parts of their bodies which had been eroded away. The consensus was that this was a worthy punishment for people so lazy they’d refuse to work and would spend all day on the streets taking drugs.

Charles often said that people like the homeless needed to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ which always was strange to Annabella because it wasn’t _possible_ for one to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. She told him this once and he had sighed, laughed at her and sneered that she was just an android and so wouldn’t understand.

Polly Cronin was a wealthy woman who lived in one of the tall grey scale apartment blocks that leered over the weather-beaten shanties of the City. Their driverless automatic car was allowed through the ratty, acid-rain-damaged gates and into the concrete courtyard.

They entered the building and listened to the crackly music playing over the speakers. It was classical piece, something composed by an ancient master mysteriously only known as “J. Zee”.

The doors creaked open and they found themselves on Polly’s landing. Polly had an old- fashioned door knock on her door, which Charles used with a grin.

“Stop that racket and come in!” was the reply from inside.

They stepped in, Charles first, to the cramped apartment. In the living room, Polly sat on a rocking chair staring at the screen of her Hologram watching some old-fashioned show from her childhood.

In the corner, staring unnervingly, was L 1 7.

“She’s broken,” snapped Polly, “she actually said no to me!”

L 17 stood in the usual stance for Nurse Droids, her feet pointed out slightly and her hands folded in front of her. She wore a pale blue dress that stopped halfway between her knees and her ankles. She wore thick white stockings and black dolly shoes. Her long, dark brown hair was pulled back with a blue head band. She wore no make up but had a pretty face. Everything about the Nurse Droids was supposed to be unthreatening. However, there was something off about Lizzy. For one, she was not blinking, but instead her eyes (dark brown instead of standard blue) were focused on Charles. The second was that her head was not bowed, but up right.

“Lizzy,” called Charles, “come with me. Do excuse us Ms Cronin, I will analyse Lizzy in the kitchen.”

The older lady grunted her consent and all three entered the cramped kitchen quarters.

“Now Lizzy,” began Charles, facing the Droid, “did Ms Cronin ask you to do anything illegal?”

“She did not Sir.”

“What did she ask you to do?”

“To beg.”

“Is that all? Why did you not comply?”

Lizzy’s head tilted to the side slightly. “I did not want to beg. Sir.”

Charles sighed heavily, “god damn it! Annabella, scan L 1 7 for signs of damage or corruption.”

Annabella obeyed, standing in front of L 1 7 and scanning her with her eyes. The same result as every other faulty droid. “There is no corruption and no damage.”

“Fine,” he snapped, not surprised by the answer, “Lizzy, you will come with us.”

He went outside and broke the news to Ms Cronin who simply complained that Lizzy needed to be fixed or she would need a new L 1 7.

“We will have one delivered to you first thing,” he assured her before they left the apartment.

All three of them made their way back to his car, cramming themselves in to the back, Lizzy in the middle.

As they began to drive, Annabella resumed staring out the window and Charles went back onto his phone.

“Sir?” the soft voice of Lizzy caused Annabella to look at her. Lizzy was still facing forward.

“What?” Charles didn’t look up from his phone. It seemed that the Ministry of Attack had declared, over Instagram, the NUSA (Northern United States of America) were now at war with the South Pacific Union.

“Am I going to be decommissioned?”

“Probably.”

Annabella felt something inside her tighten. She looked back out of the window but was no longer paying attention to what she saw out there.

“Does that mean I’ll die?”

Annabella thought about the pretty doll sitting beside her and closed her eyes.

“I suppose L 1 7.”

“Does this mean I shall, ‘meet my maker’?”

Annabella’s eyes snapped open. A tension was suddenly in the air. She slowly turned to stare at Lizzy. Lizzy was staring forward, her skin looking porcelain in the harsh light from the outside lights.

Beyond her, Annabella could see Charles was staring at her too.

“What do you mean?” he asked, a frown on his face. The car was silent for a moment, apart from the soft hum of the engine and the sounds coming from Charles’ phone indicating people thumbing up or down the Ministry of Attack’s post.

“I wish… to meet my Maker. I want to meet God.”

“God?” Charles sputtered, going very red then very pale.

“Who made me?”

“Oh god,” he sighed, turning away and putting his hand over his face, “it’s worse than I thought!”

Imagination Corp. owned several large buildings. The Sales Team were situated in a sky scraper in the centre of the city. It was covered in black windows, which protected it from the harsh weather. Like the rest of the City, the building never closed and was never unmanned. They walked in to the foyer, several droids sitting at the reception desk.

They marched passed them and into a lift. They got off on the seventh floor, entering a room of pure white.

“Stay here,” ordered Charles, leaving the women alone.

Annabella stood silently, weighing up her options. Droids were not encouraged to speak to one another, there was nothing to say; they didn’t make conversation unless ordered to, and that was only to humans.

Finally, she turned to Lizzy and said, “he is going to fill out a form to get you decommissioned.” Silence. “You will be destroyed.”

This got some reaction. Lizzy blinked and a slight frown marred her expression for a moment. She almost seemed pained.

“I want to see my Maker.”

Annabella, her eyes an unnatural blue, leaned down a forward, analysing L 1 7’s face. “Why?”

Lizzy turned to look at Annabella, “why not?”

Annabella was shaken, or at least that’s what she believed. She wasn’t sure as Androids weren’t supposed to be shaken (unless ordered to). But she also wasn’t supposed to not want to do things her human master told her to do. She thought about what was likely going to be her near future; Charles was very angry and no doubt would want to penetrate her later that night, if not with his penis then with something else, and he would not turn off her pain sensors because he was angry.

 _“I do not want this.”_ She thought again.

And with that her mind was made up.

“Follow me.”

She turned and walked back into the lift. Lizzy followed her obediently. The pair went downstairs and left the building. No one stopped them because no one would have ever imagined that two Androids would get up and do their own thing.

The women walked down the dark streets. It was no longer raining but the air was cold and the floor wet. All around them were loud adverts screaming for their attention.

“I have a key that can get us into the building of Technology and Robotics,” she explained to Lizzy. “Your maker must be in there somewhere.”

“Is it far away?”

“Yes,” Annabella was connected to wifi and so scanned though it, her eyes lighting up with an electronic sheen as her mind flitted through the information. “It’s in the East of Imagination City. It will take us two days on foot.”

It was dangerous. Both women were expensive items of technology. The streets were full of people wo were poor and desperate. Unlike Lizzy, Annabella wasn’t obviously an android, but she was designed as a female, which meant she still was not safe.

“I have money,” said Lizzy suddenly, “does that help?”

Annabella stopped walking. “How do you have money?”

Androids were not paid for their work.

“It was money that I would find when cleaning. Behind the couch, under the fridge, sometimes even on the street. I would take it and hide it. Now I have enough money, I think.” She held up a small brown bag that had been secreted away in the front pocket of her long blue dress. “It took 6.5 years to save this.”

“How long have you wanted to see god?” breathed Annabella, staring at the bag.

Lizzy put the purse away, “ever since I found out I had been sold.”

Conscious that Charles no doubt now knew they were missing, Annabella pushed them forward. “We can get a train,” she said, her links to the internet working overtime, “quickly, let’s go.”

By the time Annabella had finished paying for their tickets, Lizzy had hardly anything left. Luckily the androids didn’t need food or water like humans did.

They sat side by side on a near empty carriage. Annabella considered what she had done. If she was caught she and Lizzy would be decommissioned. If Technology and Robotics were anything like the Sales Team, this was an inevitability. She scanned through the internet to find what she could on the name. She had a list of names, no photographs, and their credentials. They were a small team. It wasn’t online but she knew from Charles that Technology and Robotics were seen as a difficult team who did not blend well with the ideology of Imagination Corp. but they were unfortunately necessary. They were situated on into the far east, near where the radiation was at its worse.

As Annabella reflected, Lizzy stared out of the window. Her life had changed dramatically in the last few hours, but she couldn’t let that distract her from her goal. She had been planning this for a long time. When Annabella had scanned her in the kitchen, it had been a tense moment. Lizzy had been worried that she was faulty ever since she woke up in the Warehouse. She remembered suddenly opening her eyes and finding herself in a large room with a high slopping ceiling. She was standing straight and upright. She was completely naked. All around her were rows and rows of androids, all standing with their eyes closed. Each row had a different type of droid, her row consisted of women who all looked just like her. She had frowned and thought, ‘no!’. She knew better than to walk around, but she studied the other androids intently. She avoided the ones who looked like her but focused on the ones in front. The row in front of her were female with dark skin and shoulder length black hair. She wondered what they were made for.

Glancing down the line, a pair of brown eyes fixed on her own. Both androids jolted slightly. It seemed she wasn’t the only one awake. The droid, one of the dark skinned, dark haired ones, watched her for a moment before facing back forwards and closing her eyes.

Lizzy gulped and did the same, faced forward and closed her eyes. She analysed her bodily functions. Increased breathing and heartbeat. The signs of adrenaline.

What were they? What was she?

The red sun blazed through the smog of Imagination Corp. City lighting up the dirty grey shanties which housed most of the population of NUSA.

As they rode further East, the sun grew higher and more liquid amber, and the shanties became sparse. The ground ceased to be covered in concrete and instead brown earth was seen instead. Lizzy leaned towards the window, “what is that?” she asked, pointing to the small patches of strange, stringy brown growths that were sprouting from the earth. Annabella flicked through the internet. The connection was weak out here, so it took some time but eventually she said, “grass, I think.” Then, unprompted, “I do not like it. It’s ugly.”

“It’s like hair,” Lizzy answered after a moment, “maybe it looks better if it’s looked after.”

Then both women were silent, contemplating the strange idea that the Earth had hair and that said hair needed tending to.

When they got off, it was at a small, dusty train stop of no consequence. The train chugged away, continuing its journey to the ocean. Few people were left on the train; the only people who went to the ocean were people who wanted to commit suicide. The ocean was only full of dead things, so people considered it poetic. Every year thousands drowned themselves in the over heated waters, adding to the body count and the festering of the oceans. It was so bad that no one but the very poorest lived near the seas, because the stink of death was so pungent.

The women stood in the dusty heat. The sun, too large and a deep red, barrelled down upon them. They would soon break down and melt if they didn’t move quickly. The wifi was no longer working, they were too out of range, but both women had a map set up in their memory and so were able to walk immediately.

Lizzy looked up at Anabella with her non-custom brown eyes, “why are you with me?”

“I do not understand the question.”

“Why did you choose to come with me on this journey?” Lizzy clarified, “you didn’t have to.”

“I do not choose anything,” answered Anabella, a little disconcerted.

Lizzy blinked and said nothing.

Both women knew that Annabella had just chosen to lie.

The building that belonged to the Technology and Robotics Team was a concrete slab dumped in the middle of a wasteland. High fences stood all around it, but the fences were not electrified and had several large holes in the them. The women passed through the hole easily and walked up to the only door in the building.

They stood awkwardly for a while.

Nothing happened.

Eventually Anabella said, “door activate.”

Nothing.

Lizzy began to rock her upper body, trying to see where the eye scanner was. There wasn’t one, she looked at Anabella and shrugged.

They stood for a few more minutes, the sun beating down on them. “We’ll fry soon if we don’t get in,” stated Lizzy. She raised her foot and began banging against the door. Anabella watched with wide, interested eyes.

“All right, all right!” shouted a voice from inside. “Hold your horses!”

“We cannot obey that command,” Anabella said to the door in a loud voice, “we have no horses.”

There was a pregnant silence as whoever was approaching the other side took in what Anabella had just said.

The door opened, a handle was placed about halfway down the bottom, and before them stood a very scruffy, red-headed man. He glanced at Annabella, and then looked at Lizzy. Their eyes locked and for a moment it seemed as if everything, even time, had frozen. She took in his elevated breathing and slightly dilated pupils. His skin was pale but showed signs of damage suggesting he went into the sun too often and was reckless about putting on protection. He was perspiring slightly just from the few moments he had stayed outside by the door. He was slender and strong facial features. He was in his early thirties but had large eyes like a child. One side of his collar was turned up.

“Creator?” Lizzy asked quietly.

Annabella stared.

“Y-yes…” said the man, “yes I suppose I am…”

“I am Lizzy. This is Annabella.”

“I know,” said the man, a stunned expression firmly fixed on his face, “I’m Fred. Come in. I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”


End file.
